FILE PHOTO A volunteer medical frontliner from the Office of the Vice President’s Swab Cab administers a nose swab on a patient suspected of having the coronavirus. Image from Facebook / VP Leni Robredo
MANILA, Philippines — The COVID-19 average daily cases in the National Capital Region (NCR) climbed to over 200, while the positivity rate ballooned to 4.4 percent, the Department of Health (DOH) reported.
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire noted that NCR’s average daily COVID-19 infections swelled from around 100 to 255.
“Here in the National Capital Region, it’s already significant. Kaninang umaga po nag-interview ako, ang nire-report ko nga lang po is (This morning, I had an interview and I only reported) about 130 average daily cases in the National Capital Region,” Vergeire said on One News’ The Chiefs on Monday evening.
“When we received the reports this afternoon, nung nag-analyze po tayo, nakita natin na ngayon, 255 na po ang average daily cases sa NCR,” she reported.
(When we received the reports this afternoon when we analyzed them; we saw that the average daily cases in NCR reached 255.)
The positivity rate, meanwhile, is already close to breaching the World Health Organization’s benchmark of five percent.
“Kaninang umaga, ang positivity rate nung nagre-report ako is just 2.9 percent. Now, it’s 4.4 percent,” Vergeire said.
(This morning, the positivity rate I reported was just 2.9 percent. Now, it’s 4.4 percent.)
According to Vergeire, almost all island groups in the country have an increase in COVID-19 cases. However, only NCR’s rise is significant.
READ: DOH: 11 cities in Metro Manila show ‘continued increase’ in COVID-19 cases
The undersecretary assured that they are monitoring the COVID-19 situation and noted that what’s important is there are few severe and critical cases, as well as hospital admissions.
The country logged an additional 529 fresh COVID-19 infections based on DOH’s latest data, driving the active case count to 4,740.